Two more persons — Bharat Jayant Kurne and Vasudev Bhagwan Suryavamshi — were arrested by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Maharashtra CID on Saturday, in connection with the Govind Pansare murder case.
Kurne and Suryavamshi were produced before Kolhapur Magistrate S A Mali who remanded them in police custody till December 7.
While Kurne is an accused in the Gauri Lankesh murder case, Suryavanshmi is an accused in the arms haul case. The SIT had obtained the custody Kurne and Suryavamshi from the Karnataka police and National Investigation Agency (NIA) respectively on Friday night. Both Kurne and Suryavamshi were formally placed under arrest by the SIT on Saturday morning.
The Prosecution’s case that is Suryavamshi was part of the conspiracy behind the Govind Pansare murder and had supplied motor bicycle used in the crime, while Kurne had supplied the weapon used in the murder.
Seeking the custody of the two accused, Public Prosecutor told the court that the investigators wanted to interrogate Survyavamshi to find out the whereabouts of the motorbike used in the crime, while they wanted to find out from Kurne as to whom did he give the weapon used in the crime.
The arrest of Suryavanshi and Kurne comes a fortnight after the arrest of another suspect Amol Kale, who is one of the key conspirators in the murders of anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar and Journalist Gauri Lankesh.
After taking his custody from the Karnataka police on Wednesday, Kale was formally arrested by the SIT on November 15. After two remands of a week each in police custody, Kale was on Thursday remanded in Magistrate’s custody by a Kolhapur court till
December 13.
The SIT had arrested Sanatan Sansatha activist Samir Gaikwad on September 16, 2015. Subsequently, the SIT filed a charge-sheet against Sameer Gaikwad, the lone accused in the case.
Subsequently, the SIT took into custody Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) activist Dr Virendrasinh Tawde.
In a charge-sheet filed in the the Kolhapur sessions court on September 8, 2016, the SIT named Tawde as the key accused and named Sanatan Sanstha activists Samir Gaikwad and Vinay Pawar as co-accused accused in the murder of CPI leader Govind Pansare. The investigators later named Vinay Pawar and Sarang Akolkar as the two men who shot Pansare. Then came the arrested of Kale on November 15 this year.
With the latest arrest of Suryavanshmi and Kurne, the total number of accused in the Govind Pansare murder case has gone up to seven.
CPI leader Govind Pansare (82) and his wife Uma (67) had been shot from a close range, near their residence “Ideal Housing Society” at around 8.30 am on February 16, 2015, when the couple was returning from a morning walk from the Shivaji University campus at Kolhapur. Four days later, Pansare succumbed to injuries sustained in the shoot-out, while his wife Uma survived the attack.
Pansare’s murder, it may recalled, had come on the heels of a gruesome murder of 69-year-old anti-superstition campaigner Dabholkar, who was shot dead him from a point blank range by two motor-bicycle riding gunmen – aged between 25 and 30 years, while he was taking a morning walk on the Omkareshwar bridge located in the heart of Pune, on August 20, 2013.